GUEST BLOG: What the Dickens…?

submitted by David Oberholtzer, Edmonton AB

[singlepic id=156 w=320 h=240 float=right]

Classical Pursuits – David Copperfield – A Morning with Dickens

“You’re going to the heat of Toronto to discuss Dickens?”

I leave the hotel and face the heat marching up Bay Street, meeting those soldiers of commerce and banking, government and the law (perhaps Traddles is on his way) and I find the room.  My book is naked – no little stickies or bits of paper to indicate special passages.  I cannot remember any of the  characters.  Why did I come?

The instructor arrives and begins with a most tantalizing questions – not a Rosa Dartle question at all – and we are off.  The ideas start to flow – why did Dickens decide to write in first person?  What effect does that have on credibility?  Who do we feel sympathy for in the book -(Dora deserves the hammer!)?  Passages are read out, little bits of the life of Dickens emerge, different takes on marriage, love, secret Victorian lust – all spin the morning away and we are off to a wonderful lunch.

To cleanse the palette I tried an afternoon with Iain Scott – the Olympics of Opera – the first day we saw tobogganing in an opera of Strauss, a long jump form Britten, and for the finale the vocal gymnastics of Ms.Bartolli.

Would I come again – of course.